Needed Rest

Once I was seated on the plane during my first leg of the trip, it didn't take me long to pull out a book to read.  I had been looking forward to that moment for two months.  Well, I would have been looking forward to it if I'd had the time.  I was so intensely busy I even let my dishes go and only washed them when I really needed to.  Most of the rest of the house stayed picked up. 

Do you remember me talking about the rocks in the jar?  It's a good thing I dumped out that jar before working on publishing the books because there is no way I would have been able to continue juggling everything, including this blog, and ready the books for printing at the same time.  My two poetry books are beautiful.  Through the work of Emily on the cover art and Janelle on the design, they look fantastic.  The insides too, have been redone, cleaned up, added to, and even a tad rewritten.  Christine's book is completely new so I had to lay it out, work with her on cover design, and we worked on all the edits.  It was a very intense two months of work.  Well worth it, but not a pace I can readily sustain for a long period of time.

By the time I gave the woman my ticket and carried my bags onto the plane, I was done, 110% done.  Not just done as in the books were at the printers being printed up, which they are, but emotionally and physically spent several times over.  I have had an image in my head of myself all dry and cracked, bleeding and parched.  Before I truly settled into my book, I talked to God about it and had the sense he was taking me here for awhile so he could rub some of that healing balm into my soul, that he would minister to me over and over again as only many repeated applications of balm would heal me. 

As I've said in other places, printing one book takes over your life--three are insane.  So now I am here in Indiana to rest.  Brie, the woman next to me on the plane, after hearing where I was going and for how long, was speechless for a second and then exclaimed, "Why?!"  But Richmond is a very pleasant town and a great place for me to rest and relax.  There isn't a lot of big things to go see so I can spend much of my time reading books I neither have to write nor edit.  Heaven.  I can write if I want, attend seminary classes if I want, spend time with friends, and cuddle a cat named Chub in what has quickly become my favorite house.  At this moment his head is resting on my elbow (Carole and he just came to a good compromise on who got that particular seat on the couch--they're sharing it.)

Yesterday I spent at Quaker Hill cuddled up on a couch downstairs reading a book about who really killed Humpty Dumpty when he fell off that wall.  Thinking about it, I realized I felt so raw, I needed to escape into a book as a kind of protective layering.  That and a lovely walk through the woods was exactly what I needed.  Today I spent at Earlham School of Religion.  It was really nice to meet some of the community there and see some of my friends who attend.

So thank you for hanging in here and still reading after this long break.  I really do appreciate it.  Now that the books are off to the printers, I will have a lot more time to write.  When I get home which won't be until late next week, I'll post pictures of the new covers.

I pray you too, are all finding the rest you need.

Same Kind of Different as Me

I can hardly believe what time it is. I've been reading this fantastic book I think you should all look up. It's called "Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together" I found it last week while I was over for dinner at my friend, Debbie's house. While she worked on her computer, I browsed her bookshelves. As I shared with her, looking at the shelves of books belonging to a friend from seminary is like being welcomed into the arms of a warm hug by a old woman. Unlike other bookshelves, I instinctively trust the books of such friends for not only do our libraries look a lot alike, but I am more open to reading the books I am unfamiliar with because the same people who mentored me and guided me on my spiritual journey, guided and mentored them.

This book streaked past my expectations into the category of books I believe will stay with me and is one of those books I needed to read right now. The story revolves around the lives of two men, one a white rich art dealer and the other, a black homeless man who eventually meet and form a close friendship. It's about real life, tragedy, joy, wisdom, and a God who is there with us in it all. I think I outright cried through a quarter of the book. I can understand why Debbie bought copies for her kids as well, it's that good.

In my own life, I have a friend, a brother, in Kenya. We have VASTLY different backgrounds and cultures. He has known poverty and homelessness as I have never imagined, I have had privileges he's never known. Though we didn't have the trouble the two friends have in the book in coming to the place of friendship, I can understand how two souls recognize in each other something far more than skin color and upbringing. Such friends find that a bond exist deeper than can be broken. It is a priceless gift when found.



365-09 #253

Bookshelves

What a night. We had tap rehearsal this afternoon in preparation for the show on Sunday. Then I came home, cleaned up, and headed out to an artist open house hosted by my friend Kathy with whom I acted in "Death of a Salesman". The artist was a spiritual impressionist and I enjoyed the depth of his work. He will be at the art fair this weekend and I told him I would stop by and say hello while I was there.

After most people left, he pulled out his guitar and sang for a while. While listening to the beautiful music I was looking at two shelves of books. There weren't any other modern books in the room with the exception of one underneath the coffee table. I wondered why she picked those, why those books on those shelves? Then I started to wonder, if I only had two shelves on which to put books from my library that have meant the most to me, which ones would I select? Books can have such a deep impact on our lives and the way we see the world. Some of the ones I thought of were "Mutant Message From Down Under", "The River Way", both volumes of Jane Austen, my copy of Jane Eyre, "The Four Agreements", "Hope For the Flowers", "Letters to a Young Poet", "The Prophet", "You are Special", "The Shack", "Kitchen Table Wisdom", "My Grandfather's Blessing", "Living Prayer" "A Testament of Devotion", "Secret Life of Bees", "Mechthild of Magdeburg", "Saint Therese of Liseaux", "Ishmeal", and "Glittering Images". I would also add "The Giver" if I had it in my library. This is not a definitive list but these are all books I could read again and again and come away richer every time. They have been paradigm shifts in my life, taught me to think from a much wider perspective. I am so grateful to their authors. It's amazing how you can touch someone you don't even know so deeply through words.

365-09 #192

Nourishing My Soul

Today I wasn't allowed to label a single photograph on the Pentacle's flickr site. I tend to work on a project until it's done, only taking breaks when I really need them. But I needed a more relaxed day, I need to have that still place inside me to anchor myself to with the dance show in the afternoon. So without labeling one photograph, I went swimming and wrote in my journal instead. I found that place inside me and it did make the rest of the day better. I was able to handle the emergencies and when we messed up a whole lot better with a lot less stress. I had a clearer mind to deal with it all and a clearer mind to remember all the other steps. In the book I'm reading right now, "Handbook for the Soul", many of the authors talk about meditation or being out in nature as a time to nourish their souls. I think what nourishes our souls is different for each of us. It may be swimming, taking a walk, sitting in silence, meditating, or writing poetry. I am now thinking that whatever it is, it is vitally important to do. We NEED that time. We need to calm down and clear things away. We need time to let our minds take a thinking walk, wandering and free. Our souls need to be nourished. The questions I'm left with are: what does that nourishment look like for me, what is my rhythm, and how can I nourish that rhythm in my own life? Those are the questions that are now on my mind, wandering and free.

365-09 #179

Re-Organization

I've been busy working on reorganizing my website. After working on Stacey's last week, adding oodles of photographs to the photo gallery, now I am working on updating my own. Her website was a lot more fun because you could see the results. The organizing on mine you'll never see but it makes it much more streamlined for me and easier to find things. I already did a lot of that with Stacey's a while back, now it's my turn. A warning though, you might find some errors or broken links while I work on moving things around. It feels a lot like the book "The Bearnstein Bears and the Messy Room". I have to create places to put things, throw things out, and reconnect all the links. When I'm all finished, I think I'll erase everything from the server and upload it cleanly from my computer. Though it's a bear to do, it will be better in the end. And it is nice to have the time to do all these things that have been clamoring to get done but that just got thrown off the side of my to-do pile. It has all certainly been keeping me busy. Even though I'm without a full time job, I feel like I have a job just the same.

I'm reading a book right now called "Handbook of the Soul". It's one of the books I found at that awesome bookshop in Milwaukee. I am really enjoying it and just like God has a habit of doing, it is exactly what I needed right now. I tend to do so much, I neglect the time I need for my soul, mainly the time to write. It seems nearly every author in this book, a collection of essays, mentions writing poetry as a way to care for the soul. I've started playing around, but lets admit it, warm-ups often suck and certainly, that is the case here. Still, I feel that if you open the doors up wide, good things will come. I'm counting on it.

365-09 #172

Looking Forward to Milwaukee!

I am getting very excited to go to Milwaukee next week. It will be fun to send out an itinerary for myself and not someone else. Imagine that! I have a lot of planning that needs to be done, the details like which buses to take where, where is that Irish pub where my sister works, finding luggage I can borrow from someone I can use as a carry on instead of checking a bag in, that kind of stuff.

This afternoon I talked on the phone with Megan about the trip, I'm looking forward to seeing her. We talked about what we are going to do while I'm there and one of the things is going to be a drive outside the city. I want to see what the countryside looks like. I love traveling and seeing new places, especially when it includes someone I love. Now that the tap show is over, I can focus on other things like this trip. It's such a gift to myself and her to be able to go. Ahh...

I have been reading too, taking time for myself which has been very much needed these last few months. Though I have a very long to-do list, I have been taking the time to lose myself in a good book. I take whatever delicious pages of goodness I'm reading out on the porch, sit in the comfortable chair with my feet on the railing, the sun shining, and my flowers smiling. I like where I'm at.

365-09 #141

I'm All Booked Up

Step by step, item by item, I've been going through things, cleaning them up, getting rid of them, making straight the way. One of the things I did was go through my bookshelves. This would have been a hard process if I had discarded more than a few. :) But how can I? They are my friends! My only collection is my library. I love adding special books to my shelves, especially when they are signed by the author. And no, I have not autographed my own books for myself in case you were wondering.

I like finding the messy faith classics. You know, the incredible writers of the last 2000 years most mainstream Christians have never heard of. Yeah, I love those. These include Mechthild of Magdeburg, Therese of Liseux, Kahil Gibran, and Karl Rahner. They are the cloud of witnesses around me, my spiritual ammas and abbas, my guides. I also have collections around Ireland, English Literature of the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, poetry (of course), photography, and Christianity and faith in general. I have some Janet Oak fiction, The Boxcar Children, and a lot of the American Girls collection books from growing up along with Mr. Pudgins, Pete's Dragon, and The Three Bernstein Bears and the Spooky Old Tree which I understand my mother had to read to me A LOT.

I am proud of my library. The books are like stepping stones speaking to where I have been, what I have learned, and to where I am going. They are voices I hear in my head. "Live the unanswered question," Rilke says. "Self-Knowledge is like the unfolding of a lotus flower," Gibran tells me. "Don't bother with the Caterpillar pillar," another goes. My friends at seminary and I came up with a fantastic excuse to buy books, we needed to have our own libraries and resources for our future directees to borrow from. So I am really being quite unselfish in developing my library. (Wink, wink.)

When I was growing up, books were my escape. I would take my backpack, fill it with books and snacks, and climb the tree in the front yard as high as I could go and I would sit up there all afternoon reading away. Sometimes, books can still be an escape for me but they have become more of a place to go than a place I go away from. I love what I learn. I love the worlds opened up to me through books. But most of all, I love who I become because of them.

This afternoon I took most of the books I no longer wanted down to the Book Bin, a used bookstore I really like to see if they would want to buy any of them. They surprised me by taking most of them and I was thrilled. In return, they would either give me $10.05 in cash or $16 in store credit. Which would you have chosen? Yeah, even with all my personal finance work and need to save up for auditing classes in the fall, I went with the store credit. It was so fun to pick out my books! I felt like a kid in a candy store! First, I selected a copy of, "The Four Agreements", a book I have told you about before that was a paradigm shift for me in my life and thinking. Then I chose another book I have wanted to have in my library for some time, "Kitchen Table Wisdom" by Rachel Naomi Remen. This book and it's companion, "My Grandfather's Blessing", which I already have a used copy of, should be, I believe, required reading for every spiritual director, counselor, and anyone in the health field. They are amazing, filled with truth books that have taught me so much about caring for the human soul. I treasure both volumes. To round it off, I bought a book by Anne Lamott. I have read one book of hers but it was enough to make me really like her as an author. She is so honest and frank, she is real and I appreciate that and can relate to her in her humanness. They are all books I will be happy to have in my library. Leaving the bookstore, I figured we were both happy. I got rid of several books I didn;t want in return for a few I do that take up a lot less space. They got some books they can sell for a higher price and make some money. It's a win-win. I love win-win. I think I may go through my bookshelves again to see if there are any I would be willing to sell to them. I am sure there are other books I would rather read. But that will wait till down the road. I have other things to focus on in the here and now. Like all those books waiting at the library for me to read... So many books, so little time.

(A quick note for fun. A friend took me out to eat after photographing a play tonight and when the waiter asked me how I wanted my steak, I said, (after a full night mind you), without thinking, "over-easy." Trying to translate that into meat terms, she askes me, "Medium-rare?" (Me slightly embarrassed and greatly amused) "Yes, please, medium-rare. Thank you." Apparently, funny things can come out without thinking.

#365-09 #140